Mental age is a concept in relation to intelligence, expressed as the age at which a child is performing intellectually. The mental age of the child that is tested is the same as the average age at which normal children achieve a particular score.
However, a mental age result on an intelligence test does not mean that children function at their "mental age level" in all aspects of life. For instance, a gifted six-year-old child can still in some ways function as a three-year-old child. Mental age was once considered a controversial concept.
Read more about Mental Age: Mental Age and IQ
Famous quotes containing the words mental and/or age:
“Surely it is one of the requisites of a tasteful garb that the expression of effort to please shall be wanting in it; that the mysteries of the toilet shall not be suggested by it; that the steps to its completion shall be knocked away like the sculptor’s ladder from the statue, and the mental force expended upon it be swept away out of sight like the chips on the studio floor.”
—Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911)
“Two voices are there; one is of the Sea,
One of the Mountains; each a mighty Voice:
In both from age to age Thou didst rejoice,
They were thy chosen Music, Liberty!”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)